These images are a series of paintings, drawings and photographs depicting the landscape of the global economy. Port Terminals like these are commerce reduced to its essential form, sites built for efficiency only. They are sites that are immense and empty, seemingly still and unmoving, yet incredible volumes of materials move through daily. These container ports are an abstraction of the infrastructure, underlying our cities and suburbs. They are points of consumption and entry. I see landscapes like these as reflections on the values, needs, and dependencies of our culture. Both on the outskirts and fringes, they are essential to our daily lives. I have been interested in large shipping terminals for awhile. I take photos and create paintings reducing the image down to a simplified, essential gesture
on the landscape. They are about weight density and space. The satellite drawings also draw from an objective source and are a search for pattern and structure.


matthew cramer
www.sugarbutterbex.com